This marvelous debut novel by former New York Times correspondent and National Book Award--winner Gloria Emerson is a witty and deeply affecting portrait of the stubborn hopes and disillusionment of a privileged woman who dreams of making a difference in the world.

The polite correspondence she shares with the novelist Graham Greene inspires Molly Benson to see him as her moral guiding light. After his death in 1991, Molly sets out to honor his memory by going on a mission with two friends to Algeria at the start of that nation's brutal civil war, intending to save intellectuals from Islamic fundamentalist hit squads. But nothing in her genteel existence has prepared her for the perilous journey on which she and her humble delegation are about to embark.